Manga Thoughts: Shino Can't Say Her Name

Ever since reading “The Flowers of Evil,” I’ve kept an eye out for the intriguing and sometimes unsettling (intriguing for sometimes being unsettling, perhaps) manga of Shuzo Oshimi. After going through his “Inside Mari” on Crunchyroll’s manga service, when the chance arose to get that series in print through the new publisher Denpa I started buying it. Denpa’s upcoming titles have been pushed back and back over the past year or more, though, and as understandable as that is right now it has raised a few worries in me the company might not get around to publishing the series in full (there are just two volumes left to go now) or to “The Men Who Created Gundam” (although not by Oshimi, it got my attention for other reasons). I bought one Denpa volume of a series by a different artist with vague hopes that would “help support the company.” A previous impression or two it had some Oshimi-like qualities, though, bumped into the thought it was finally just a bit too much for me. I wound up instead buying an artbook from Denpa of Oshimi’s illustrations, and then, perhaps nudged by noticing one more title of his listed on its back cover, bought a “complete in one volume” story from them, “Shino Can’t Say Her Name.”
( Saying her name )